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The Concept of Evil

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Something important is now visible in our politics, but the heart of it is not at the political level""not, that is, at that level where liberals and conservatives divide. What's alarming about the political forces that have taken over is not the conservative nature of their stated political positions, nor the traditional nature of their stated moral values. America would do fine, I believe, with leaders who were in reality the moral and political conservatives these people claim to be.

The problem with the forces now ruling America is, rather, at that deeper, moral and spiritual level""the level from which spring values like fairness and honesty and compassion that are shared by decent Americans of all political stripes.

It is at this level, as I see it, that these ruling forces have been unusually adept at obscuring their true nature: under the sheep's clothing of a false righteousness, these forces are giving free rein to the wolf of their unbridled lust for self-aggrandizement.

Indeed, it was my witnessing the success of that deception in seducing many basically good people that led me to confront the nature of evil more deeply than I ever have before.

The face of evil hidden in plain view

The dark truth of America's current peril is not hidden away, awaiting revelations from secret tapes. It's right there in front of our faces, playing out chapter-by-chapter on the news on prime time TV.

It's there in the way these forces have injected what I call a "culture of falsehood" into the American body politic. With their almost habitual disregard of truthfulness in their own utterances, their contempt for science and for objective analysis of all sorts, their insistence on forcing reality to conform to their beliefs rather than vice versa""America's current rulers are degrading that heritage of honest deliberation on which American democracy rests.

It's visible in how unrestrained by any notion of justice or the common good these forces have been in their insatiable pursuit of wealth and power for themselves and their cronies.

It's visible in the unscrupulous way they pursue political advantage -for example in their consistent practice of character assassination against any who might meaningfully challenge them.

And it is visible, too, in their consistent fostering of division""both among groups within America and between America and the world. By systematically focusing on those issues that divide Americans, and never on those values that we share, these ruling forces have made the American people more polarized than the pollsters have ever seen before. And, by their way of wielding American power on the world stage, they have made this country the object of more hatred and distrust from the peoples of the world -even among our traditional friends""than ever before.

And it's there perhaps above all in their consistent dismantling of the traditional structures of good order""in their consistent degradation of the structures of international order, of environmental regulation, of Constitutional restraint on political power""all those structures that might otherwise restrain their freedom of action.

If, as I believe, goodness is to be understood in terms of wholeness -the arrangement of the parts of a system in a harmonious, well-ordered and life-serving way""then surely evil, as the opposite of goodness, will involve the kind of destruction of harmony and good order manifested by such developments as those I've just described.

But it's not only the destructiveness of these ascendant forces that led me to my new sense that evil was an important concept. There is also something in the dynamics of their rise to power, as I'll soon relate, that made the ancient notion of "the battle of good and evil" seem valid and important.

The liberal discomfort with the idea of evil

When I began to speak out about my sense that dark forces were consolidating their grip on our country, I did not feel a need to use the e-word. It seemed adequate to use less spiritually loaded terms like "ruthless" and "amoral" and "dishonest" and "bullying."

But as I continued to explore the dark spaces that I'd seen, those words soon seemed insufficient. There was another element that these words did not capture, and soon I was speaking to liberal audiences about the "evil forces" at work.

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Andy Schmookler, an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher, was the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia's 6th District. His new book -- written to have an impact on the central political battle of our time -- is (more...)
 
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